Tour de France plan for Richie Porte

Sports Reporter

Richie Porte of Team Sky celebrates on the podium. Photo: Getty Images

Richie Porte was seen as a potential Tour de France winner by his Sky team's head trainer Tim Kerrison before he was signed up.

Kerrison is in Australia to monitor Porte as he kick-starts his season at the Tour Down Under, which finishes in Adelaide on Sunday.

While Porte has won races, including Paris-Nice last year, he has spent most his first two years at Sky riding for the team's two Tour winners - Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome. He will get his first chance to lead Sky in a grand tour at this year's Giro d'Italia, from May 9 to June1.

Before joining Sky, Porte was a member of the Saxo Bank team and rode to help Spaniard Alberto Contador win the 2011 Giro and place fifth in the Tour, which was won that year by Australian Cadel Evans.

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But the Tasmanian showed his potential in 2010 when he placed seventh overall and won the best young rider's category in the Giro.

That result and his rides for Contador and himself elsewhere made him a priority recruit for Sky.

And according to Kerrison, he was signed with a view to him one day leading Sky at the Tour as part of a succession plan in which Porte is pegged third behind Wiggins, who won in 2012, and Froome, who won last year.

''It will get tougher for us over the next couple of years when there are other teams and riders watching the way we do things,'' Kerrison said.

''We are not going to have it our way for too much longer. But we have super-talented guys coming through and Richie is the next of our general classification guys coming through.

''I remember the first meeting I had with Richie in 2011, sitting down with him in a meeting room in Milan. I said, 'I genuinely believe that you have potential to win the Tour'.

''At his best, he can climb as good as anyone, At his best, he can time trial as good as any of the GC [general classification] guys. And as a young rider in his first grand tour, he showed great consistency. Those are the three key things to win the Tour.''

Kerrison said Porte's racing program had been brought forward this year in order to prepare him for the Giro, whereas last year he was ''intentionally held back'' to save him for the Tour in July.

''This year it's a different story with him targeting the Giro,'' Kerrison said.